Real Feelings.

Correctly Self-Diagnosing Depression

Everyone, at least once, thinks they are depressed. This little epiphany has inevitably led far too many people to diagnose themselves with depression incorrectly. This has to stop.

There’s a difference between depression and just feeling regular bad. Inaccurately self-diagnosing yourself with depression is not a good thing to do because, I firmly believe, it trivializes the anguish some people are forced to endure for their entire lives. Not to mention, it attracts too much undeserved sympathy and that is despicable. Don’t start pitying yourself if this applies to you, you’ll only confuse feeling bad for depression again and the cycle will start all over again. Instead, ponder this:

What is the number one symptom of depression people see within themselves that leads them to self-diagnose depression?

Loss of energy. Feeling fatigued, sluggish, and physically drained. Your whole body may feel heavy, and even small tasks are exhausting or take longer to complete.

When that lethargy starts to creep in, here’s a quick tip to either confirm or disprove your self-diagnosis: eat a big ol’ steak every day for a month.

Really? Can confirming a self-diagnosis really be as simple as devouring cow after cow? Yes, it can! If you feel better–

Pardon my use of the word “better”. You deserve better than a blanket statement like “better”. Too often pieces promising wellness, such as this, are published without any metric for improvement. We are left hanging, trusted to have the wherewithal know what our “better” is, even though if you clicked this–a piece promising a quick fix to know if you really are depressed without risking time and money getting stigmatized for seeking out professional opinions–you may not have the best gauge of what “better” is. And if there’s nothing tangible “better” brings to your mind…you might be…

Please excuse the digression. If after a month of cramming flesh flanks down your craw you have begun to feel more energized, invigorated, motivated, your self-diagnosis has most likely been incorrect.

Before you begin beating yourself up over the misdiagnosis, there is reason to celebrate. In your experiment to test your depression self-diagnosis, you have inadvertently cured your anemia. Yes, I may have, in some cases, led some people to compromise their animal rights beliefs and colonic health but at least you have not declared”I”m depressed”, trivializing hardships of the truly depressed because your iron is low.

Furthermore, one can never rule out the possibility that the so-called depression isn’t just a good, perfectly natural wallowing that will pass in a few days. Fleeting sadness, anemic or not, more or less means you’ll manage just fine. So long as you remember not to wear “depression” as a badge of honour. If it persists daily, even after eating a whole stockyard’s worth of steak, by God seek help by any means necessary!

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4 thoughts on “Correctly Self-Diagnosing Depression”

Thoughtful post. Thanks. A friend of mine told me his depression lifted when he stopped thinking of others as different from him and started seeing the similarities. As John Donne said, no man is an island. For a social animal, we can be surprisingly insular.

I have had major depressive disorder for most of my life. I think the best way to figure out if you have true clinical depression as opposed to just the odd day when you have the blues is the go see your family physician. Sometimes you need medication, sometimes you need cognitive therapy, sometimes both! Thanks for shining a light on this all too often taboo subject. =)

Oh I still have major depressive disorder alright. I am taking medication that helps me do things like get out of bed and use the computer and function. Perhaps I could have phrased it better but the fact remains that I have had it most of my life (so far) and consider it to always be with me either in the background or clawing it’s way to the surface. Right now I guess you could say it is just below the surface thanks to the pill I take each day. =)